


If You Were Here

by Phantastic (DoubleX)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Eventual Smut, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Smut, bottom!Phil, dom!Phil, sub!dan, top!dan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleX/pseuds/Phantastic
Summary: Dan and Phil are both on holiday with their parents and they wish they weren't. Long talks on Skype suddenly aren't enough, and when they get home nothing is.





	1. But He Was Smiling

**Author's Note:**

> Not meant to be offensive to the boys! :3

"I know, I know. Shush, shush, it's okay." Sweeping his fringe to one side, Phil looked so concerned that Dan almost began to sob again. The quiet patience of his best friend was too much, and yet not enough.

"I'm sorry," he sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve and falling back into his pillows. "I'm just tired. I don't do hot countries very well." But he was smiling now, at least.

"Goodness knows," grinned his bespectacled boyfriend with a knowing grin, and Dan chuckled as he rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. They sat in companionable silence for a while, revelling in the quiet illusion of each others' company.

With a sigh, Dan glanced out of the window. The view was beautiful, a midnight's purple ocean under star-speckled skies. What a dork he was, thinking like that. It was just a pretty beach, and this was just a Skype call. Awkwardly shifting the camera around to show it, he grinned to himself as Phil gasped.

"It's nowhere near as beautiful as you," Phil said decisively.

Dan blushed deeply, trying to hide it by checking over his shoulder that the dusty attic's trapdoor was locked and undisturbed. "Nice try," he smiled indulgently. "But you'll have to try harder than that."

Feigning offence, Phil slid his glasses down his nose. "Well, what would you say, young man?" he muttered nasally, the camera shifting wildly as he tried to contain his laughter.

Dan, who was doing no such thing and laughing into his pillow, sat up and smiled smugly. "I'd say to the stars that they couldn't call themselves bright until they'd fucked a literal sunshine into oblivion." _Oh, God, that doesn't even make sense._

"Yeah, right," Phil contested, chewing his lip and turning away as he flushed - bright red against practically white. "That was one time! I have great, um, self-control. You should be, um...telling the...those birds, those, um, gull things, that they can't call themselves high flyers until they've failed at bottoming more than you did. Geddit?"

Dan snorted derisively, laying on the sarcasm good and thick. "That hurts, Phil."

"Yeah, it did!" Uncontrollable laughter off-screen, as Dan shook his head in silent mirth. As soon as Phil settled down onto his bed, Dan opened his mouth to speak and heard one of the damned seabirds screech past his window. Who needed videogames for a good jumpscare?

"Fuck me!"

"Wrong way around, Dan."

"I'm leaving."

"That's not what you said then."

"Oh my God Phil, actually stop it." But he was smiling.

"That's not what you said, either!"

And before Dan could even click, Phil hung up.  _Cheeky bastard_ , Dan thought - but as he closed his eyes, he was smiling.


	2. Happy Sad or Sad Happy

"I love you." A smile, a smile that was somehow rakish and daring at the same time, a smile that danced in the eyes like stars. Dan didn't mind being a dork, as long as he had this one.

"I love you too." Warmth, spreading through him in a much better, deeper way than the oppressive heat boiling the sand as the sunset baked it golden. The warmth of an embrace he couldn't have for just one more day, one more... _Too long._

"Well then, I love you more." A happy, sad, defiant jutting chin.

"Well in that case, I love you more than more." A sad, happy, acquiescing cocked head.

Dan shifted his attention from the old-fashioned swirling patterns on the sloped ceilings. "What is your fucking grammar? 'More than more'," he repeated teasingly, but Phil just pouted.  _Language, Dan._

"You ruined it!"

"Ruined what?" Dan asked absently, idly playing with the frayed hems of his jeans. As if explaining something obvious to a child, Phil took a deep breath. Dan leaned forwards. Was it serious? Important?

"Maybe 'I love you' will be our always," crooned Phil as Dan shrieked, "Nooo! Why?!"

"If I was there," Phil asked jokingly after a few moments - or minutes - of helpless laughter, "would you throw a cushion at me? I bet you would."

It took Dan a moment to respond, and he lay back offscreen with his hands behind his head. "No."

"Hm? What would you do, then?" asked Phil, cocking his head before leaning offscreen himself. All Dan could see was a beautiful painting of some cherry blossom, and he smiled a small smile.  _Of course._

"If you were here," he murmured up to the ceiling, "I'd lie down next to you, and tell you over and over again how beautiful you are until you finally believed it and smiled up at me."

"If you were here," Phil replied softly through his earphones, "I'd sit next to you as you perched on the end of the bed, and rub you on the back and stroke your hair until you finally let go of your stress."

"If you were here," Dan continued with a smile, running a hand through his hair, "I'd kiss you everywhere you'd let me and press my forehead to yours and kiss you until I passed out."

"Well, if you were here," Phil whispered - and for a moment, Dan was sure he could feel his boyfriend's warm breath tingling his ears even from the other side of the world - "I'd let you kiss me anywhere you wanted to, and then I'd press my head to your chest and listen to your heartbeat, and wrap my legs around your waist and look down at you as you woke up."

Dan turned away a moment, shifting his legs and refusing to look down even though he knew Phil couldn't see him. "In that case, if you were here...I'd look right back up at you and smile, and then I'd ask. And you'd say no, and I'd want to anyway but I'd listen and just feel you warm against me and above me, and we'd just lie there and think for a while."

Dan heard a sigh, but it wasn't an angry sigh. It was more of a happy sad sigh, or a sad happy sigh. An utterly indulgent, fantasising sigh. "If you were here," Phil mumbled lowly, desire darkening those expressive, beautiful eyes to an extent it very rarely could, "I'd think about things with you until you were scared of the thoughts you were having and you wanted to feel for a while instead." He paused, and Dan opened his mouth to reply. But, then-

"And then you'd ask again," Phil carried on quickly as Dan blinked at the cherry blossom on his computer screen, "with that hopeful little grin on your dopey face. I'd say no, again, just, until you begged underneath me, and then I'd say okay because I'll never truly say no to you. Never, ever, Dan. And I'd try not to watch you get ready, only because you'd say you didn't want me to, and I'd hug you around your bony shoulders before we did anything at all - because I don't want you to get hurt. Ever."

Dan ached with the sheer physical longing, the need, to be with his best friend, his lover, his housemate, his soulmate. Now and forever, cheesy as it undoubtedly was. The sun had set, and inky clouds were settling over the sea. "Go on," he choked out, surprised to find that his pillow was wet with sad happy tears. Or were they happy sad tears?

"If you were here," Phil breathed, his voice a light in the darkness of his quiet concern, "I'd suck on your neck like the happiest vampire not alive," - Dan snorted - "because I know you'd want me to. I'd say 'not yet' again and again, whisper it around you and into you and over you until you'd do anything, and then I'd trail kisses over your collarbone so I wouldn't hurt you, and you'd look so scared. And I'd stay still, no matter how much I wanted not to, until you said the word."

"You're incredible, Phil," Dan sniffed after a beat. "How did I ever get you? How do I deserve you?"

"If you were here," Phil said forcefully over the top of the last words, moving back into view as Dan did the same with a dancing smile in his red-rimmed eyes, "I'd order you not to say things like that, and when you moaned that I'm too good for you I'd be moaning louder because you are just as good at me at _everything_ , Dan Howell. Don't you ever say you're not. Okay? I'm the one that doesn't deserve you. You. Will. Never. Not. Be. Good. Enough."

Dan rolled his eyes at the implications despite himself, but something in Phil's tone made it hard to be flippant. "Sure. If that's what you want. And, you know, you're not so bad yourself."

Phil grinned sheepishly at the feeble joke, some but not all of the intensity leaving his eyes in swirls of darkened sky. "If you were here, I'd make it what you want. What you wanted all along. Yeah?"

"Yeah, but what about what you want?" Dan yawned.

"I want you to be happy," Phil answered simply. "I want to know that you'll let me, because I'd never do anything to make you unhappy, even though I know that's your thing." _My...thing?_ "Nothing would make me happier. Except, maybe..."

Dan tipped his head to the side. "What? What would? Whatever it is, I'll do it." And that sentence alone stretched Phil's grin right across his face, and Dan smiled. Properly smiled, the sad forsaken in favour of the happy in the euphoria of that one perfect moment - crystallised ocean air and glittering eyes in the sky looking down. "That's it," Phil murmured, jerking Dan back to reality.. "The first thing. That you trust me that much, that you'd be happy to do anything I said because you know I'd never make you. Now that - that's your thing." Dan was a little confused at all these things, but he nodded and waved his hand as if to say, 'go on.'

"The second thing, though..."

Still smiling innocently, Phil leaned towards his screen as if about to impart some great wisdom. Dan did the same, wracking his brain guiltily for something...anything he could have missed.

"Well, Dan, it's this. Do tell me if you come up with a better scenario...than you screaming my name over and over all night long." Phil winked and ended the call, leaving Dan utterly shell-shocked and burning in the dark. He'd fallen for it again.

Phil had to be sick or something - he was never this lewd, except at home. Dan smiled into his pillow. Maybe some change would be fun.

_One more day._


	3. Dorky, Dorky Dorks

_Thank fuck for free airport sockets. Where would I be without you?_

_Now that wasn't just one big kinky innuendo, nope_ , Dan muttered inwardly as he plugged in his iPhone. All he'd been able to think about for the past twenty hours, thirteen minutes and...sixteen seconds...was Phil.

Luckily his parents had chalked it up to sunburn, even though Adrian had smirked and winked behind their back as he absently hugged them goodbye.  _He's a cheeky little twat_ , Dan knew, _but he won't say anything about that._  Being gay, that was fine - but there was no way he was admitting the real reason for his suddenly even shorter attention span to his parents. No chance.

Dragged back to the busy airport by the violent vibrating of his phone after a night on a plane, Dan swept back his fringe and looked through his new messages. Most of them were from Phil, a warm blanket of questions and friendly emojis and begging for a reply that made him feel...cared about. Really, truly cared about, in the way that he knew only storybook characters and movie stars were. Or...perhaps not. The last message proclaimed in all caps that Phil's phone was  **"DROWNING OMG"** and needed  **"CHARGE-PR!"** _He's such a dorky, dorky dork._

Trying and failing to shift any attention to the other people who had welcomed him home, Dan sent Phil a constant stream of compliments in return for the concern as he waited out the charge. It wasn't hard to come up with them - it was as if they'd been waiting in the back of his mind for forever and a day, just for this.

**I love your eyes. They're what would happen if the sky got lost in the ocean and didn't want to be found. I wouldn't.**

**I love your lips. When you open your eyes wide and then your lips purse, I know I've got your attention and I know I'm the happiest man alive.**

**I love your hair. It curls inwards like a lion's mane, and even though it used to frame your face like the Mona Lisa, now it crowns you like my very own King.**

The list went on and on, and in fact it came as a bit of a shock when Dan realised how many messages he'd written, how simple it was to sing the praises of the wonderful man he lived with.  _I'm such a dorky, dorky dork._

Based on the dirty looks he was getting from half a dozen random strangers, Dan figured his phone was charged and tried to look blamelessly nonchalant as he strolled away. The suitcase didn't help.

Twenty minutes, seven words and an exorbitant amount of money later, Dan was looking up at the drab apartment block, looming against the grey London sky.

And nothing had ever been as beautiful.


End file.
